Projekt: ReFE&F21 - Building Resilience for Food Event & Festival Entrepreneurs in the South Baltic Sea Region (SBSR)
[This page is under construction] Lasting pandemics has destroyed rural FE&F sector within entire SBSR, but also affected previous efforts to promote attractiveness of the rural heritage in the changing landscape of the region. FE&F is a primary mean and an important output uniting the local traditions and food production modes into a live display, celebrated by local residents and SMEs, attracting tourists, entertainers and media. Project aims to develop business mobilization model as to prepare action plan for capacity building that strengthens resilience of the entire FE&F ecosystem in the rural development context. Through enabling cross-regional and cross-sectoral stakeholder collaborations, the project participants will focus on solutions and partnership network development. Project activities include discussions and creative workshops on post-pandemic FE&F designs for recovery, revitalization and resilient future through rural FE&F tourism that fosters consumer behavior, business practices and policy changes.
Project information
Project manager
Marianna Strzelecka, project owner; Daiva Balciunaite Håkansson, project manager
Other project members
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Participating organizations
Linnaeus University; The County Administrative Board, Kalmar, Sweden; Lithuania’s National Tourism Business Association, Vilnius, Lithuania; Koszalin University of Technology, Faculty of Economic Sciences, Koszalin, Poland; University of Applied Sciences: Technology, Business and Design, European Project Center, Wismar, Germany; The University of Southern Denmark, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences, Odense, Denmark.
Financier
Swedish Institute
Timetable
September 2021–September 2022
Subject
Economy, Tourism
More about the project
Throughout Sweden, Lithuania, Poland, Germany and Denmark local FE&F keep evoking a sense of commitment to own community and pride for its cultural heritage. For years, local entrepreneurs have been demonstrating their interest in building collaborative networks striving to increase attractiveness of the rural areas within the SBSR.
Yet, FE&F entrepreneurs and SMEs do not hold a required capacity on their own, therefore are not able to generate and promote solutions capable to secure sustainable FE&F business future locally.
It is crucial they come together and start working collectively. For their own community. For the neighboring one. For those in a close region and between the regions. Nationally and transnationally. Connecting people, connecting ideas to tackle analogous challenges in every community, to realize collective solutions that would preserve the uniqueness of local rural cultural heritages, create jobs, slow down the outmigration of the young as the overall rural decline, but also - to fuse a portion of hope into the future of local communities.
This can and must be done today whereas FE&F serves as a primary mean and a key sector in the social, economic and political welfare of rural communities of participant countries. Through creating a shared value and diversifying rural economies, to break the negative trend in SBSR’s rural underdevelopment.
